


so much time on the other side

by petitpavot



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 23:26:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4456574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petitpavot/pseuds/petitpavot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dying was easy. She had heard that somewhere before and disputed it. Her experience with death had been nothing but complication, comas are not easy and that’s as close to death as one can get right? This, whatever it was, it was not easy either.</p>
<p>In which Abigail is a ghost not a byproduct of Will's memory palace. Just trust me.</p>
            </blockquote>





	so much time on the other side

**Author's Note:**

> This started off as a blank refusal to accept Abigail dying, became a paranormal AU and then turned into meditations on Abigail's lack of independence and finished off with me trying to write the ending she deserved. Title comes from Florence and the Machine's How Big, How Blue, How Beautiful which I listened to exclusively while writing this.

Dying was easy.

She had heard that somewhere before and disputed it. Her experience with death had been nothing but complication, comas are not easy and that’s as close to death as one can get right?

This, whatever it was, it was not easy either.

But dying itself? She had to admit it was easy, the scar tissue had a surprising amount of give to it, and dying in the arms of a father figure who didn’t want you dead felt much sweeter than your father drawing the knife.

He had, again, a moment before, but you were lucky to have another father to catch you.

She stood outside Will Graham’s hospital room and laughed to yourself. “Abigail had three daddies.” 

Two of them tried to kill her, one had succeeded, another nearly convicted and now you weren’t sure if you could die again at all.

Her post-death experience was typical in many ways, floating up past your body as Will held it, tried to get the blood to stop, or go back inside as he bled out himself. Then, nothing. Blackness and quiet.

Finally.

But she is Abigail Hobbs, and she just can’t seem to die properly. Because an instant later she’s in Will Graham’s hospital room. He’s asleep, but he senses her, his heart rate jumps a little and his eyes, sad, even when they’re closed flicker back and forth. He wakes up, a doctor comes by to see him and brings in another man. When he leaves, just as Will is about to lapse into unconsciousness is when you make your entrance and it’s like a morphine shot to his IV, you can see the pain leave the body.

“They told me he knew exactly where to cut me, they said it was surgical“ she says and feigns life because it's easier to explain than whatever this is, feigns hope even though she knew from the second that knife touched her ear that they would never go to Europe, that there would be no "new life", only purgatory. 

“He wanted us to live.”

And then more purgatory it turns out, maybe literal, or maybe it's hell.

She doesn’t make it easy on him, challenges him in the way she knows he expects. She keeps up the fantasy of family because she knows what he needs and he still needs to believe in Hannibal as much as he hates him or this fight will never be over. It would be simple if Will only needed to hate Hannibal, but blind rage cannot capture him, Hannibal is smarter than that, and intelligence requires complexity. 

“I’m having a hard enough time dealing with this world.” and for the first time she tells the truth.

For all the time she's known Will, Abigail has been told that he is fragile. That he requires a light touch and most importantly to not get too close, "You have to be careful not play into Will's fantasies, he thinks he's your father" Doctor Bloom had warned her once in a strikingly candid moment. "Are you scared of him Doctor Bloom?" she had responded, barely holding back a smile at her own boldness. The doctor had backtracked at that point, but that was answer enough. 

So she had been told of Will's fragility and she can see it, as her fingers trace the wires that connect heartbeat to monitor, blips of life she'll never show again. She wonders what her funeral was like, they probably didn't bother with one. Everyone who ever cared for her lay in graves or hospital beds. Hannibal, of course, was different, Hannibal was always different wasn't he?

The wires don't move beneath her fingers and she wonders if they can, she's too scared to try. 

Will lapses into deeper sleep, from his eyelids twitching, she can almost see his dreams, and she knows they will meet there. Suddenly her hands are fading in front of her and she slips away. 

In his dreams she dies, again and again and again. "Variations on a theme" she hears in Hannibal's voice as she remembers music piping into the dining room.   
Sometimes Will gets close, the gash in her neck a little smaller than fatal, or he stops the bleeding and stays conscious long enough for the police to arrive. But she dies over and over again in that dream space that feels like infinity. 

“I didn’t know what else to do, so I just did what he told me.” There was a novel in that sentence and through shaking lips she can only hope Will understands what it encompasses. Because every time she thought she knew what horror was, someone else managed to show her differently. There was an elegance to the torture of her captivity, beyond elegance there was in a way a kindness that she can only call paternal, then again her idea of anything paternal had been twisted for a long time. 

Then comes the moment where it seems like they might escape, that this is all a bad dream she made up in the hospital and when she wakes up Hannibal will take her to his home where everything is as it seems, Will can come for dinner and she’ll get out of this, she can’t get rid of the scars but she’ll move forward. 

Then comes the cruel twist of the knife in Will’s gut, the repeat of the promises she had heard so many times before. She wonders if he believes them, wonders if she ever did and when Hannibal offers his hand she knows she never could. In a cast of characters she’s labeled the victim, sometimes the monster but as the knife rips into her like a white hot flash she thinks of that book she wanted to write. Screw everyone else she was the hero of this story, things just went wrong. As her final act she dies gasping, fighting, Will’s hand on her throat.

The teacup shatters, she does not wade into the stream.

And it starts all over until he wakes up.

 

She soon learns the pattern of things, for the most part she is tied to Will, she fills the blank spaces in time when his mind is apt to wander, she saves him from his own mind. It's not an awful purpose, but God does she long for the days before her life was directed by others. She can hardly remember them, but they must have existed, even a few glorious days whose memory make her ache. 

She spends her time with Will echoing conversations he had had with others, allowing his mind to pick and choose realities. Doctor Chilton visits often and Abigail parses together a better idea of what happened when the world thought she was dead.   
There are moments where she has a little freedom and she wanders around the hospital, stares at Alana Bloom as her bones come back together. She is happy that she will live.

Sometimes, as he comes out of dreams she hears Will mutter about "smashed teacups" and that's what their lives feel like, all of them touched by Hannibal.  
Will eventually leaves the hospital and they continue their little life together. He puts her to sleep in his bed and sleeps on the couch as he makes plans for their travel to Florence. 

They visit Hannibal's home and talk about different lives they could have lived. "I never thought this is how we would be together in Florence," she says to Will and the lie cuts into her like the wound on her neck. Because playing innocent feels wrong, because if there is something beyond this she really should be on her best behaviour, and she thinks about revealing it all. But then Alana comes to speak to Will, leaning heavy on her cane and Will finishes the conversation saying that he came here to be alone and he smiles at her and she can't help but smile back. She can feel the blood on her face, feel the jacket now stiff on her back. She doesn't know what Will must be thinking now, he must understand that things are different now. Or maybe he's just happy to have her back in whatever form this universe will grant. 

Dying like this is hard, there's no way around it. 

 

Eight months pass like this, recovery, hospitals and preparations until they fly to Italy. Will's surprisingly good on planes, but his grim determination keeps the conversation brief. He turns on a movie for the both of them and they watch between naps. He doesn't order food which is good because technically there's an empty seat beside him and she's not really sure how they would deal with that. 

They arrive in Palermo and check into the hotel room, Will says she needs sleep but really it's the opposite. He'll probably sneak off when he thinks she's sleeping and in a way that will be a blessing because she's getting tired of watching herself die so much. She can't bring it up because then he may wonder how she can see into his dreams. Things are starting to get more complicated and as strange as it seems if her only other option is nothingness, then maybe it would be nice to squeeze out the last little bit of life she has left so she follows him through near ancient streets until he arrives at a chapel. He does not enter, only sits and stares for hours. Eventually they make there way back and Will sleeps for a few fitful hours where his dreams never change.

The next day they return to the chapel and she asks him if he feels closer to God, because she’s conducting her own research, the search for Hannibal is a quest for the living, she is searching for answers about her own circumstances and since they’re surrounded by believers this is her first channel. She’s getting ready to pose her next question when a priest stops her dead in her tracks.

He can see her. She knows this, she feels his gaze like she held her finger over a candle flame for too long. She wants to stop, wants to shake this man down for answers but Will’s moved on and in some cursed way so must she. 

Hannibal gives them his broken heart and she stops pretending like she doesn't know what's going on. "He's playing with us," she says like a revelation, but this change is her choice, it's her first step to freedom.

Will lets her go a few days later, tries to explain her away as a product of his memory palace, his fragile mind. But she knows better and she hardly cares. She is not Will's and no one is taking her away this time. He's letting her go and she's taking her freedom and running with it.

She’s got a priest to find, this isn’t death and it’s not a half life and she doesn’t care what anyone says.

This is rebirth.


End file.
